Monday, July 25, 2005

"Never Tell Anybody Outside The Family What You're Thinking Again"

This Alberto Gonzales 12 hour gap is quite interesting, but I'm sure that we all also remember that Gonzales also later reviewed every document that was produced and vetted it before it was released to the Justice Department --- the Justice Department run by John Ashcroft who didn't bother to recuse himself until three months later. Let's just say there were many opportunities for documents to have gone astray in this process.

As I was perusing old articles about the document production, I also realized that none of the top administration aides bothered to lawyer up in the early days when they were talking to the FBI. One could assume that they were confident they'd done nothing wrong, but it strikes me that these guys may have thought it was in the bag. They had old "Let The Ego Soar" Ashcroft at justice and Alberto the torturer handling any incriminating documents.

And while one might have expected the president to say that he knew the truth would be revealed because he expected his staff to be forthcoming with the authorities, instead we got this:

"I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers," he said. "You tell me: How many sources have you had that's leaked information that you've exposed or had been exposed? Probably none. I mean, this town is a town full of people who like to leak information."

We always knew that somebody leaked this to Bob Novak. And unless Novak was lying, it was two senior white house officials. But the president of the United States said quite candidly that he didn't think we would ever know the truth unless reporters burned their sources. He certainly didn't seem to expect the "senior white house official" sources to come forward, did he?

With the benefit of hindsight, that sounds like the president of the United States was reminding the press corpse to keep its collective trap shut, doesn't it? (Are you listening Judy?)